Alone In A Crowd

We all have a story of feeling alone, wondering if anyone understands what we’re going through. Maybe it’s in your running life, maybe it’s about how you look, maybe experiences you’ve had. While this might not be a Christmas-friendly topic, it’s my story of loneliness that feels fresh and worthy of sharing today.

I was pregnant with my son in 2005 and in the throws of pre-baby bliss when people in my family started dying. The causes were all different, each as unique as the people themselves. Sadly we searched for answers and quipped that God needed to open up some space in our family for Colin’s birth.

The first call was from my brother. He breathlessly spoke into the phone words I never imagined in my nightmares he’d say: Liam was dead. Fell asleep at preschool and never woke up, a toddler version of SIDS. Just sixty children in the U.S. had inexplicably died this way leaving no closure, as if that’s possible for a parent to attain. Pregnant at 8 months I was unable to attend Liams memorial in Utah.

Then my brother-in-law, Steve, died just days later. An accident. He was in his 40s.

We moved to the Central Coast of California and the calls kept coming. My aunt, whose death was a shock and a cautionary tale. Caretakers often do not outlive their spouses. Simply put, what killed her was her lifestyle of ignoring her needs for the sake of her husband’s.

Soon thereafter my mother-in-law called. Something was wrong and she needed to speak in person. We sat on our porch and she told us the unbearable, unimaginable news. Andrei, my brother-in-law, was dead at 36.

Then Sam’s second son died at birth.

Another aunt. We started losing track, stopped even telling our friends. I stopped wanting to answer the phone. Our therapist asked for a Family Death Tree so she could keep them all straight. Then God added a little twist to the mix: my childhood home burned down, leaving my parents so shocked, so vulnerable. My dad barely made it out alive that night.

What surprised me about the experience of the family deaths wasn’t the intensity of my sadness nor the pain and anxiety about them. I half expected that free-fall, like riding a ferris wheel and reaching the top – OK, we’re on our way down now. What really hit me was the sense of being alone. No one in my friendship circles asked me about my experience, and no one in my community seemed to be interested. It was like I had a virus. If you talk to Caity about her grief you’ll get the Death Virus! If she brings it up, just remark at how wonderful the weather’s been lately. The deaths were always one step disconnected from me… not my brother, but Stefan’s brother. Not my sons, but my brother’s sons. Not my sisters, but my mom’s. I was supposed to be the support, not the one mourning.

My family also doesn’t talk about dead family members. To this day we have no annual rituals, no conversation about them. I bring them up and family hesitates to make eye contact. They sigh and tear up. But no one offers memories about them, no one indulges in memorializing them with me. People don’t offer any encouragement or response. It’s like they want to forget.

The deaths just trickle in now after the storms of 2005-2008. But I haven’t gotten over the pain, and I question whether others have. These family members were incredible so why would I want to give them up completely, lost to the past? I want to indulge in who they were to me and talk about them once in a while. I sent a card to a friend recently who’s experienced death. I wrote, “People who say ‘time heals’ are full of shit.” These dead people are still alive to me, not fading away. The memories are solid and my love for them is solid. Besides, when I’m dead I want to be celebrated just like I want to celebrate Liam and Andrei and Aiden and everyone else.

I have a friend and talk show host coach named Dave Congalton who wrote a book about five family members who died in one day in a fire: Three Cats, Two Dogs: One Journey Through Multiple Pet Loss. His book not only describes the process he went through losing his family but it enabled him to soak in the memories of who they were to him, share his pain and mourn their deaths. When Dave first told me about the fire I was taken aback. My own husband won’t talk about all the family, including his brother, who died. And this man is sharing the pain of his experience. I immediately felt a kinship with Dave.

In my next post, I’ll compare family death to having plantar fasciitis. Yes, it takes some stretch of the imagination, and it might offend people who have lost family members. But death and injury can both be very lonely times. Lonely times indeed.

What inspired me to run in the first place.

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3 comments

I fear the day when death comes near me. So far i have not lost anyone close to me. Grandparents but they were old and it was time. It was very sad and I miss them but it was the natural order of things.
I did have a misscairage and no one wanted to talk about it. I did though. I had hopes and dreams and they just ended. It felt similar to jupiters autism diagnosis. That one will always hurt even though he is still here we lost part of him.

I have always liked the mexican cultures day of the dead. The reverence and connectedness. Just because they are not here doesnt mean they are not here.
Hugs to you my friend. Im sorry you are lonely. I truly am. Thats the worst kind of lonely when there are people around.

Although some of my losses are not technically deaths, for the past 6 years or so I have been and am currently mourning losses in my life. The saddest part about grieving loss is not being able to share it with people. Its lonely. I often wonder if we can truly heal when our loss is kept hidden away from the world. I’ve had to find my own ways of grieving. Recently I’ve picked up meditation again. My meditation allows me to fall back, open my heart up to the sadness, be in a deeply vulnerable state and then let the emotions take me on a journey so I can learn from them. It is often very cathartic. Sometimes it can be exhausting though.

I could never presume to know exactly how you feel, but I have some sense of the loneliness. If its anything like mine you could definitely use a big ol’ hug and a good cry. If I were closer I would hug you, girl!